My Sister-In-Teeth

This one comes to us from Jennifer H. in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois:

PS I am curious to know the meaning of the term sister-in-teeth when talking about your sister-in-law Kelli. I Googled it and guess what I came up? Your blog entries when you used that term! Do enlighten me when you have a chance.

Jen, the journalist and marketing/communications expert and the general clarity rockstar--I am so sorry to have confused or disappointed you in my use of this complete incomprehensible term. I thought I had defined it upon its introduction but clearly I did not and that is not responsible use of funky vocabulary. My apologies.

The explanation: One of the very unique benefits of being a teacher is that you get your photograph taken every year on School Picture Day, for the class composite photo or the yearbook or your school ID or whatever. Not only do you get your picture taken, you get an entire package of prints, FREE!--usually the largest and most widely varied package including among other things multiple 8x10s which I used to mail to my grandmothers, much to their delight. So, a funny thing that teachers do (Ha ha! Witty teachers! They're so cool and we're so jealous!) is cut their photos apart and write messages on the backs of them, yes just like we all used to do in middle school, and trade them with one another. They say funny things like this one, from my brother two years ago:

Sarah-Hey. Can you tell from the fact that my shirt is buttoned wrong in this picture that I teach special ed? I did it on purpose but no one got the joke. Thought you'd find it funny. BFF! love, your brother Nathan

He and I trade photos every year and now his wife Kelli, also a teacher of course because what Kotleba isn't (okay, Steve, fine), joins in the fun by swapping her pictures with us too. The first year she was in the classroom--high school Math, good for her but no thank you--she took a fabulous, adorable school picture in which her signature photographic trait was clearly revealed: her double row of perfectly straight, sparkling white teeth. It is an attribute she and I share, smiling with our whole mouths and showing all our teeth, and one for which Nathan makes fun of us. So what did the inscription on the back of that wallet-sized snapshot say?

To Sarah, my sister-in-teeth...

Outta Time

Have you seen the movie Back to the Future, that mid-80's blockbuster movie with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd? In it there is a time-traveling DeLorean and its license plate says OUTATIME, a reference to the tricked-out sports car's superpowers.

I realized in a huge pile of emails and to-do lists, tears and frutration yesterday that guess what? I was outta time...outta time to get my finances in order, outta time to get my taxes filed, outta time to get my visa application approved by an African embassy in Washington, D.C., outta time to get my digital camera repaired and my prescriptions refilled and my mosquito net purchased all before next Wednesday morning, February 6, at 7:05 a.m. when my flight was scheduled to leave SFO for JFK for ACC, San Francisco to New York to Accra, the capital of Ghana.

I hate it when I can't pull stuff like this off, I hate it when my powers fail me and my unrealistic sense of what I can and can't do catches up with me and bites me hard, right in the rear. I hate it even when it is not my fault, when it is beyond my control, when it is not the result of sloth or laziness or disorganization on my part but is really just the result of interrelated circumstances, just the result of life.

Was it impossible to think I'd be able to arrive in Berkeley on January 10 and leave three weeks later? No. What it unlikely? Maybe. Did I think I could do it? Of course because I am still learning, and this year is full of many lessons, that I actually cannot do absolutely everything. Do I judge myself harshly for having to say I wasn't ready, I needed more time? Yes. Does that make a lot of sense? No. Was I mad that I had to pay $275 to change my ticket? Of course. In the end does it matter? Really, most likely, not at all.

My intentions have not shifted, my motivation is no less than it was before. I am aware that if I do not receive the significant financial support for which I have applied then just all bets are off, inarguably, because I cannot continue to perform acts of tikkun olam, of repairing the world, on the money I earned tutoring Anglo ex-pat kids a few times a week in Jerusalem when I wasn't busy volunteering as an English teacher in an integrated neighborhood's understaffed public school. It just won't be possible. But until I know about that for sure one way or the other I continue to search the Internet for the best price on mosquito nets, I continue to complete in quadruplicate the Ghanaian immigration forms I will submit once I am able to prove my own financial sufficiency for the time I am there. I was out of time but have given myself an extension--an expensive but necessary one, time is money after all I suppose--and it is my sincerest hope that I will still go to work and live for three months in Africa. Until I am told no, I will persevere in planning on yes. This just means that I have a few more days before I leave to wash my hands under a faucet instead of in a bucket. Nice.

It's This Kind Of Thing That Frustrates Me

This afternoon, aware that I am now going to be here almost a week and a half longer than I initially thought, I spent some time poking around on craigslist looking for something both engaging and temporary that someone might pay me to do. Over the course of this year when I am actually here in the Bay Area, this present time included, I work as a substitute teacher at Rebecca's school. This is great in that I get to carpool to and from work with her, as well as get paid well to do something that comes very naturally to me now and which I very much enjoy. This is not great because people are only absent so often, so the work is kind of sporadic.

Interested in what other more regularly-scheduled options might exist, I was looking in the "ETC" category of the Employment section. This posting's title caught my eye:

Part-Time Night Audit/Front Desk: C'Mon Inn, $65k/year

I just want to say that good thing I went to graduate school, twice, and have taught for a dozen years as a fully-credentialled teacher because this PART-TIME position and the friendly, family-oriented "C'Mon Inn" pays much more than my teaching salary does. Good thing. And in The State of The Union address we are told that No Child Left Behind is *working*? Seriously, come now...I teach in an independent school where we are not bound by the guidelines and requirements of that program and even I can tell you it is not working, not when you pay a part-time hotel auditor and front-desk employee more than you pay a veteran educator and teacher trainer. That actually says to me that there are a LOT of things that are not working right now. Harrumph, as Aaron would say. Harrumph.

Two Wool Sweaters

note: this is not a picture of me--you can tell because the person shown is wearing only ONE sweater. silly girl. she's probably cold.

It is winter in Berkeley and I have come up with a new wardrobe approach that for some reason I had never considered before. I am someone who, when finding a garment I like and that works for me, purchases many of the same thing in various colors. Examples: my three pairs of Old Navy chinos (grey, green, red) from a year or so ago, my five Gap sweaters with the little chest pocket (white, grey, pink, green, black), my thirty-two H&M tank tops which are worn in rotation every single day of my life as undershirts.

The latest strategy? If things are the same garment and same size I just put on two of them for increased warmth. Well, not pants. That would be weird. It's just been sweaters so far, yesterday and today, but maybe I'll branch out.

Four Haikus From Summer Camp

note: This is not a photo of an actual campfire from last summer, so all of you who have been to Tawonga can stop tilting your head and squinting your eyes and asking yourself, "Is that at The Burn? Is that in the Freedom Forest? Is that by the Moadone?" The answer is no, no, no, it is not any of those places. I do not know where it is or who those people are. I found the picture on the Internet.

While going through a Whole Foods bag of mail and other papers that have been collecting in my absence the past four months, I found a sheet of paper on which during a dull moment at camp last summer I wrote a set of haikus reflecting my experiences at that time. Now don't start with me about the semantics of what is and is not a haiku. It's more than just 5-7-5, I know, but not in this case. So there. Enjoy...

#1, about the grooming:
curly wild hairdos
no one ever showers here
Jewish summer camp

#2, about the schedule:
Peet's coffee at eight
rest hour each afternoon
bedtime snack at ten
(note: "hour" has two syllables in this verse)

#3, about the integration between housing and nature:
spiders share my bed
munching noises in the night
I don't live alone

#4, about one of the nighttime activities:
thick smoke fills my throat
s'mores would make this much more fun
i don't like campfires

"Do not directly handle the dead snake..."

"...instead, carry it to the medical facility on a stick or in a bag."

This quote, from the book Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America by Dirk G. Schroeder, made me laugh out loud with such gusto this afternoon that the cats - eye - glasses - and - beehive - hairdo - sporting matron at our neighborhood's branch of the Berkeley Public Library had to come over and shush me in person. It is advice for what to do when seeking medical treatment in the devloping world for snakebite...because you see, if you don't take the snake with you to the clinic the medical professionals won't have any way to know how to treat you most effectively.

And, I am going to a part of the world where this is not at all laughable but is actually pertinent information for maintaining one's health.

Sweet Jesus, protect me.

Fluency and Comprehension

I did my graduate research in the areas of fluency and comprehension as they relate to reading and other forms of literacy. Without being a giant windbag I will summarize briefly here by saying that fluency, a combination of the rate at which one reads and the expression they apply to the actual text, and comprehension are inextricably linked and that shifts, positively or negatively, in one necessarily affect the other.

Yesterday I was reminded of a topic in which I have, almost without noticing over the past twelve years, developed complete fluency and profound comprehension: school. During the time that I am here in the Bay Area, both at the beginning of the academic year and also now, I have worked as a substitute at Rebecca's school. Yesterday one of their teachers had the flu and I had the chance to spend the day in second grade. I was reminded of something I've known for awhile but had not practiced (in English at least) for quite some time, since last June--the language and culture and life of school.

There is language, there is syntax, there is grammar and semantics and vocabulary and when I look around I see it everywhere, when I open my mouth it just pops out. How do I know when to say "Explain what you mean by that? I think you're on the right track..." and when to say "Now is not a good time, sit down please."--? I'm not sure. All I know is that in this year of everything being different and finding myself often wishing there was a dictionary not just for the fluency and comprehension of Hebrew but also of life, I am glad to return if only every now and then to this form of literacy I have come to know so well.

Sunday in the City

On Sunday I spent the afternoon and evening in the city, a place I called home for eight years, now somewhere I've only been twice since September. I had birthday brunch at Ti Couz with Matt, coffee at Ritual with Shoshana the former volunteer in the Ghanian organization where I'll be working, and drinks at Harry's with Ryan. Busy, busy...

Matt and I have known each other since 1998, officially ten years now, and it is always so good to spend time with him because while there are a few things I choose not to discuss with him, he has all the respect and support in the world for the things I do share with him and that means a lot to me.

Shoshana I had never met before, she is a teacher and Masters of Social Work student and lived in Africa for seven months at this refugee camp where I am going and she seems very cool and looks a lot like Jen, my graduate school colleague, so I liked her immediately.

Ryan was the most difficult to see, he and I have been colleagues and friends for four? five? years now and have grown up a lot professionally together. He was my TA three years ago and my partner teacher last year and he is holding down the fort in third grade without me this year and I can honestly say I sometimes avoid being in touch with him for that reason because I get school-sick and it is hard and very sad because I am jealous that he is there and I am not--even though it was my choice to be away. Seeing him was fabulous, he is doing great and I trust his point of view beyond any argument so hearing all of what's going on this year from such a relatively objective point of view was very informative and helpful.

Then, unlike the past when I would get on the 21-Hayes or the 38-Geary or the N-Judah and make my way home to my own little corner of San Francisco, I got on the BART and came back to Berkeley. Times, they are a-changing...for now at least. It was weird to be in the city as a visitor and not a resident but it was a very fun field trip despite the rain and I'm glad I went.

Thank You Very Much To All Of You, I Mean It Even Though It's Hard To Say

I, as all of us do, have a number of idiosyncracies. One of mine is that I hate, and am awful at, asking people to pay attention to me and fuss over me and make a big deal out of me (or even a medium-sized deal) but I love, love, love it when they do because I am not someone who is able to really ask for others' attention or make any sized kind of deal out of myself at all...personally, that is. Professionally it is an entirely different story and if I am teaching you about the subject and the predicate, the numerator and the denominator what we are doing is very important and you need to pay attention and stop talking and sit down please. But personally it is hard for me and when people recognize this and are able to walk the fine and sometimes shifting line of paying gentle, no-big-deal attention to me without me having to ask I am so grateful I don't even really know how to say thank you.

So I write this post to offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude to everyone I saw, heard from, talked to, and celebrated with who helped make my birthday such a great day yesterday:

Rebecca for our field trip to yoga class, the Blue Bottle Coffee, the necklace I'm going back to get at Atomic Garden, brunch at Venus, the notes on my napkin and take-out box, the cards and the hipster restaurant selection in Temescal, the SuperHero!!! necklace that I have always wanted but couldn't pick out for myself, the limitless hospitality and basically being my best friend always

Mark for making coffee, not being so so mad that Rebecca and I got back from brunch late, suggesting Cafe De La Paz when Dona Tomas had an hour-long wait for a table, the great card with heartfelt wishes inside and owls on the front

Aubrie for her photo SMS of a Happy Birthday Sarah! picture, her plans to drive to North Berkeley so I didn't have to take the BART to Fruitvale, her understanding of my wardrobe uncertainty, her flexibility to meet and celebrate another time before I go, her reminders and reassurances that while some things are messy and complicated and confusing right now others are much improved over last year and (a flashback thanks) her cupcakes last year which just absolutely made my entire day, and being my other best friend because a girl should get to have as many best friends as possible I think!

Wes for his SMS, his email, and his suggestion that we go eat wherever *I* wanted to go

Sofia for singing Happy Birthday to me over the phone including the "you look like a monkey and you smell like one too" line, and for recommending the Elephant Bar at Bay Street for dinner

my Grandma for being so persevering as to call twice from DeKalb, Illinois, and then chatting with me for almost half an hour about everything even though it was late at her house by the time I called her back

my aunt Mary Jean who also called twice from Seattle, Washington, and with whom I also had a nice long wonderful birthday talk

my cousin Kristine who called from Chicago

my brother Nathan, my sister-in-teeth Kelli, and my nephew Henry who called, sent a card, sent a package, sent photos, and generally loved me up

Ryley, Hana, Esther, Ann, Dana, and Marty who all used the highly modern networking tool Facebook to send me birthday wishes

Jason (was that you who called and left me voicemail?!?! I couldn't really hear your message but it sounded like you and my phone was off and you didn't leave your number or if you did I could not hear it and I'll look in my email to try and find it but my old phone was so dead I couldn't get any contact information off it so I don't have your 415 number or know how to call you back but I want to talk to you!!!), one of the finest educators and colleagues and friends I have known who I still, three and a half years later, miss terribly and adore completely and am not nearly as good at being in touch with as I should be but it's hard sometimes when you miss someone so much....

Jim who much to my profound surprise considering the fact that we have not been in touch in years sent me a late-night birthday greetings email

Rebecca M who left me a sweet note and who I will just miss seeing here in the Bay Area when she and Michael come to visit very soon :(

And, in advance today, to Matt with whom I'm having lunch and Ryan with whom I'm having dinner

Thank you to everyone who made my birthday, splashed down right here in the middle of my three weeks in the Western Hemisphere, a very happy and special and fun and memorable day for me! I appreciate all you did, even though it is hard for me to say so sometimes.

It's My Birthday Today

So far I have:

*slept in
*gone to yoga at Namaste in Rockridge
*enjoyed Blue Bottle Coffee at Bittersweet
*been treated to brunch at Venus by Rebecca

I am now considering going running, since I am still wearing my exercise clothes and since that sure was a lot of lemon curd I ate with my pancakes. I am also considering the fact that, well, it's my birthday.

I was reading in the Chronicle yesterday about the newfound voices developing among "young" voters as the political scene grows evermore exciting in this country. Would you like to know how old the "young" voters are? They are 18-34 years of age, the Chronicle says.

What does that mean? Do I no longer get to claim the adjective of "young" to describe my adulthood? Am I just a plain old adult now? Funny...it sure doesn't feel that way.

This is what my adult life is like right now: no full-time job, no home to call my own, no partner, no family. This is about the least adult-like I've ever been if one applies the conventional definition of the word. And, looking back on birthdays of my past, there are many in which my life was much more traditionally adult-y than it is now. Example: almost everything was different than it is now when I turned twenty-six. I was a full-time graduate student with a full-time job to which I commuted seventy miles round trip each day. I had a car and a house and a partner and a pet hamster and a hipster life in the city and way more money (not THAT that much, but way more than now for sure) and I felt very differently about things than I do today, more than half a decade later. So maybe I am just constructing my adulthood in backwards order? I don't know.

Regardless, it is my birthday and I feel quite accomplished to have been alive this long, to have come this far. Looking back there are things that make me indescribably joyous and things that make me heartachingly sorrowful and perhaps most importantly there are many, many things of which I am very proud. So, happy birthday to me :)

Just Hold Your Nose And Jump

The past few days, since returning from Chicago late Tuesday night, I have felt very scattered and frantic--trying to do my laundry, clean my room, run errands, pack up things to return to my storage space, make a million phone calls and send two million emails and generally conquer a to-do list of epicly intimidating proportions. This morning while working on securing my finances for the next seven months, no small project, I had a brief study break in the form of a Google chat with one of my oldest friends in San Francisco. A devotee of privacy and a self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist she is a fan of the "off the record" feature when using gmail's chat application but her wisdom was too rich to let pass by unnoticed so with cutting and pasting being impossible I retyped it all here. Thank goodness for insightful friends. Read on...

me: one topic of conversation--i don't really want to go to africa, and my travel agent just issued my ticket this a.m. i think it is just a passing thing and i don't REALLY not want to go but it's kind of confusing for me right now

v: you want to go to africa. honest.

me: right? i'm just feeling very displaced right now. when i lived in jerusalem it was with other people who were traveling and working overseas and volunteering and had kind of a portable life. now i am back here and my friends have jobs, and homes, and predictable lives. which i realize is to some extent the reason i left...maybe it's a case of the grass is always greener. i'm still happy about my choice but it's just starting to seem like a long year

v: it's true. but it's only a year. you have friends here and we'll be here when you get back. permanence is overrated, besides.

me: i know that is what i always thought until i packed two bags and took off. it still believe it's true but maybe there's a middle ground between permanence and nomadism?

v: yeah, but it requires being rich.

me: very funny...something i am definitely not. ugh i knew i would feel like this if i came back to the bay area between israel and africa so i shouldn't be surprised

v: yeah...and you'll be back. it's not like you're making a career limiting move. or like you're bumming aimlessly around europe. you can choose stability whenever you're ready for it. just not right this moment.

me: okay are you sure, because stability seems very tempting right now. of course i know that if i have come this close i would regret it forever if now i didn't go. so really this is a false argument from the beginning, but it feels very unsettling nonetheless

v: it is unsettling. just hold your nose and jump :)

me: good advice. that just might be the quote of the day...blogworthy...thank you for the wise counsel

Revisiting a High School Fantasy

Over this recent long weekend honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I was in Chicago visiting my family. This morning, in my attempt to return to Berkeley, I missed my flight at O'Hare and was reminded of why the urban hipster snob in me, while learning to love the chill East Bay life of Berkeley, unabashedly hates the Oakland airport.

How many non-stop flights are there from O'Hare to SFO every day?
Ten.

How many are there to Oakland?
Three.

How many had already departed by the time I checked in seventeen minutes after the cutoff for my original flight?
Two.

How many hours did I get to wait for the third and final flight of the day?
Eight.

*sigh*

I refused, however, to sit on the nasty C-concourse carpet all day long and instead bravely bundled myself up (high temperature=six degrees outside today in Chicago, SIX! insanity...) and got on the CTA Blue Line heading downtown. By noon I was not only not at 38,000 feet on my way back to California, I was not even in my early thirties anymore. Instead I found myself half my life ago back in time as I stood before this painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, by Impressionist Georges Seurat.

Remember the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, only the coolest flick of my entire adolescent life? I must have seen it dozens of times and had, in that nerdy teenage way, much of the dialogue memorized. Who did I want to be more, Ferris or Sloane? I could never decide. The scenes at the Art Institute of Chicago were always my favorite and I dreamed of the day someone would hold my hand and kiss me in front of the Chagall windows. Once I became a teacher and started leading my own students on learning journeys out into the world I became even more fond of the scene with Cameron, Sloane, and Ferris holding hands in a long line of kids on a field trip as they paraded in front of the famous Seurat. So today, with eight hours to kill, I stood before the wall-sized masterpiece myself and pretended I had Sloane's moussed and Aqua-Netted hair, Ferris' leather jacket, and Cameron's dad's red convertible. That, as Quincy from the Little Einstein videos has taught my sister-in-teeth Kelli to say, would be a-MAZE-ing!

I have quite a powerful imagination, and the time warp of my daydream almost made up for the six-degree weather. Almost...

Two

degrees Fahrenheit. That is the high temperature in Chicago today. HIGH temperature. The low is -6. My flight leaves at 1:22 p.m. and packing was much easier than for the last trip I took, one week at my best friend's New England wedding followed by three months in the Middle East. The clothes I am taking, though, consume almost a comparable volume because really when it is two degrees one wouldn't even be wearing enough wool if one were to somehow don a living, breathing, fully-insulating sheep.

Two.

Technical Difficulties

It seems as if they are plaguing me at every turn these days. There is something wrong with each of these things:

*our wireless
*the DSL cable
*the cursor on Rebecca's computer (the only one in our house which currently connects to the Internet)
*my Skype
*my computer in general
*my digital camera
*my headlamp (different tech genre, still invaluable)

So, my blogging has been a mere shadow of its usual self lately and now you know why.

In exciting communications news, however, I got a new phone yesterday. After having had it for three years, or was it four?, my long-suffering Nokia finally lost its ability to dial. That made me eligible for an equipment upgrade, I decided. I have only just begun to learn about all the exciting features and capabilities of my new Ericsson device but that, I think, could be a fun project for the four-hour plane ride to Chicago on Saturday. Tetris in flight mode, here I come.

Where I'm Going Next

It's all a little mind-numbing, since I just got back to the Western Hemisphere on Thursday night, but yesterday morning at 7 I had a conference call with Masha, the woman in New York coordinating my next placement, and Jeremiah, the director of the NGO with which I will be working in Ghana. Here is an excerpt of the notes from that phone call. I include it almost out of incredulity (is that a word?) that this is where I'm going next....

About SHIFSD- Self Help Initiative for Sustainable Development was started in 2000 and is run by Liberian refugees who fled to Ghana from the civil war in Liberia. There are 18 local volunteers and 2 international volunteers currently working with SHIFSD in Buduburam refugee settlement. There are many social activities in the settlement- many CBOs, NGOs and churches with over 40,000 people living in Buduburam. The settlement had government structures that manage the affairs of the camp including 1 representative from each of the 12 zones in the settlement, police to provide more security, a conflict resolution program and a council of elders.

SHIFSD has two primary focuses- education and economic empowerment. Within the education focus there is an adult literacy program and a fast track 3-year program that has 8 facilitators or teachers and 1 coordinator and includes a lunch and health education program. The economic program includes a micro credit with education project in which women are organized in a solidarity group and receive equal amounts of money that must be paid back with interest. The group meets once a week for educational programming about various issues and topics.

Arab Coca-Cola

Today I stopped at the market on the way home from running errands to pick up a few things for dinner since it is my night to cook. The weekly menu posted on the fridge lists "Sarah's Medley of Goodness" as this evening's offering and I certainly don't want to disappoint with a billing like that.

Standing in the checkout line at Safeway (sorry Rebecca, I did not go to Andronico's or Elephant Pharmacy or Whole Foods or even Trader Joe's *but* the veggies I bought are all organic so fear not) I decided the special treat of a Coke was in order, having gazed with longing since yesterday at the Diet Coke in our fridge...so I bought one along with everything else.

Once home and settled in I poured myself a glass of fizzy sugary delight, only to realize it is not fizzy sugary delight at all but rather fizzy high fructose corn syrup-y delight. Ugh. I'd forgotten about that.

In Israel, as in the Mission district of San Francisco, Coke is sweetened not with HFCS but with good old, straight-up cane sugar. Mmm, dee-lish. The Coke you buy in the Mission comes from Mexico and is usually sold in glass bottles that the taqueria guy has to pop for you with an old-fashioned opener that he keeps behind the counter so no one swipes it from the salsa bar. The Coke you buy in Israel comes from the territories and is sold in 500mL bottles just like any other soft drink, except that some Jews refuse to drink it because it is produced by Palestinians in the Arab cities of Ramallah and Jericho.

Mexicans, Arabs, whatever, whatever. Bottoms up, I say. While I do prefer me a Coke with sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, really when it comes down to it I am an equal-opportunity soft drink consumer.

I (Wish I Could) Write Hebrew

I miss speaking Hebrew now that I am back. I had just gotten the hang of it, moving beyond what Rebecca rightly called my "Buddhist" mastery of the language (being able to speak only in the present and about one singular thing at a time) to ... *gasp* ... the past tense! No longer did I have to plan out every single question I wanted to ask a bus driver, no longer did I cringe in dismay when people would ask me for directions or the time. Finally it was coming together, conversation and also reading. I would just practice all the time, on the bus or walking through town--that sign says "falafel", I would think with delight, that billboard says "Wednesday". I felt so victorious.

Now I am back in Berkeley and we speak English here, English with a bit of Hebrew when context calls for it ("Afo ha farmers' market?") and so it was a delightful surprise when the arduous task of cleaning out a box I'd left behind in Mark and Rebecca's extra bedroom led me to find this poem that Deborah shared with me last summer at camp.

I Write Hebrew
--Salman Masalha, translated by Vivian Eden

I write in the Hebrew language
which is not my mother tongue, to
lose myself in the world. He who doesn't
get lost, will never find the whole.
Because everyone has the same
toes. Left big toe
by right heel.

And sometimes I write Hebrew
to cool the blood that spurts
endlessly from my heart. It's always like that.
There are many treasures
in the coffer I have built in my chest.
But the colours of the night that was spread
over exposed walls, peel
without ever knowing what
all this wonder is.

And I write Hebrew, to
get lost in my words, and also to find
a bit of interest for my footsteps.
I have not stopped walking. Many paths
have I travelled. Engraved by my hands.
I shall take my feet in hand
and meet many people. And make them all
my friends. Who is foreign? Who far, who
near?
There is no strangeness in the ways of the
world.
Because strangeness, mostly,
lies in mans heart.

Trader Joe's

The other day I went to Trader Joe's for the first time in almost four months. Among the Anglo community of Jerusalem the absence of TJ's or anything similar is a big source of grief and a constant topic of conversation. "Miso soup, doesn't that sound so good right now? You know they have that great one at Trader Joe's..."

I spent $86 and came home very happy:
low-fat yogurt
raisin medley
orange juice with calcium
green apples
crunchy peanut butter
Kiss My Face pear soap
Emergen-C (cranberry flavor)
extra-firm tofu
etc. etc. etc.

The one thing I forgot is the so-very-necessary chocolate sandwich cookies. Disappointing! I guess I'll just have to go back...oh no, not that.

Kaiser, Sweet Kaiser

Because students around the world, in Israel as well as in the States, are generous with their teachers I have pinkeye. Yuck. The scourge of educators everywhere, along with the even more unpleasant lice, I myself have probably had pinkeye six or eight times in my twelve years of classroom practice. Going to the other side of the globe did not protect me and on Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after arriving home profoundly exhausted, I found myself in the waiting room of the Kaiser urgent-care clinic in Oakland.

I was reminded of a trip I made in December to the family medicine clinic in the Wolfson complex on Diskin Street in Jerusalem, suffering from an ear infection so painful that it had become impossible to open my mouth all the way or to chew. What a difference between the two trips: then I could not read any of the forms I had been required to sign, whereas now I could read everything from the HMO's patient care guidelines that I was handed along with my deli-style waiting room number when I checked in to the sign on the wall asking people to please "cover their cough" since it's flu season. Then I sat waiting with Ethiopian immigrants and Filipina home health care workers, the slice of population who benefit most from the semi-socialized Israeli insurance system, while here I sat with Mexican day laborers who were losing income even as we sat there waiting to be seen for our collective maladies and Chinese moms who murmured reassurances to their fussy, feverish children in a language I could not understand.

Oh wait, maybe that part was not so different after all?

Half an hour and a ten-dollar co-pay later I was picking up my prescription for antibiotic eye drops, fully appreciating the fact that while I am not paid for my sabbatical this year my employer does still provide me with health insurance--a far cry from the 400 shekels ($105) I paid to see a doctor and 57 shekels ($14.50) I paid for ear drops at the clinic in Jerusalem. When it comes to managed health care the United States still falls far short of providing for everyone but selfishly, in this moment, I felt like Dorothy except in Keens instead of ruby slippers. There's no place like home...

Ufros Aleinu Sukkat Shlomecha

Fridays in Jerusalem make me feel very anxious. Everyone is rushing around trying to get things finished before Shabbat starts, which happens very early in the winter (sometime between 4 and 5 o'clock during the months that I was there just now) as compared to in the summer which is when I have always been there before. The buses are filled with soldiers headed home for Friday night with their families and heaven help you if you forgot to go food shopping because the grocery store and shuk, or open-air market, are packed and insane. Then in the afternoon, just as the sun sets, the siren sounds to mark the beginning of the day of rest and the city shuts down completely for the next 27 or so hours.

Shabbat shalom, kulam...good shabbes, everyone.

Last Friday, one week ago, was my final Shabbat in Jerusalem. The sky had been dark from morning until afternoon with heavy clouds pouring down rain and so the fading rays of the sun over the hills to the west that normally hint at the coming rest that falls with darkness were not visible. An eye on the clock was the only way I knew the silence of Shabbat was about to descend over the city and I was starting to feel like my predictably agitated Friday afternoon self, so un-Shabbat-like, when Hana came out of her room and asked me if I wanted to go sit outside with her on the patio as the day faded and the evening began.

The evening dripped down around us and the strings of small white lights that frame the windows glittered their reflections along with the raindrops into the large mirrors hanging on the walls between the porch and the winter-green garden. We talked about the siren that we heard sounding to mark the end of the week as we sat there with our tea and about what a crazy place Israel is, about how there is nowhere else in the world that would use the same siren both to summon its people into the bomb shelters constructed within every building and to announce the complete ceasing of work, the celebration of the end of another week that is Shabbat.

As we sat quietly with nothing but our clouds of breath to punctuate the stillness of the delicate quiet, too cold and damp to really take in the beauty of the night falling around us but too unwilling to break the spell of rest and peace that had so pronouncedly descended from the outside and was just now beginning to take hold on the inside, I thought more about these seemingly conflicting ideas of Shabbat and the bomb shelter and of the siren that signals the opening of both. I was reminded about what has for quite some time been my favorite blessing, Hashkivenu, and of its line which seemed to offer a connection between these two strongly opposing ideas of war and peace:

ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha

There are many suggested translations of this line, many of which I find unnecessarily long and bulky. I prefer the succint "build your shelter over us," a specific request to the God named earlier in the blessing by a people who want peace. The ironic sounding of the siren that brings the people of Israel to both the concrete shelter protecting them from bombs and the temporal shelter, Abraham Joshua Heschel's "cathedral in space and time" that is Shabbat still rang in my ears and in my heart as Hana and I went inside to the shelter of our own apartment and I began my final Shabbat of my time in Israel.

Incoherently, Incomprehensibly in California

It is late on Friday night and I am back in Berkeley at Mark and Rebecca's. I am so tired that I feel like I might fall over, even though I am sitting down. The past twenty-four hours since I arrived have been spent doing the completely irrational things that such profound jet lag can inspire, like walking home to North Berkeley this afternoon from Kaiser in Oakland which seemed like a good idea at the time somehow but I now realize was absolutely ridiculous.

How did this happen? Just yesterday I was in Jerusalem...and London...and now I am here.

We Had Kind Of Gotten Used To Having You Around...

In three hours the shuttle is coming to pick me up for the ride to the airport in Tel Aviv. My flight to London leaves at 7:25 p.m. and by 4:30 p.m. (ten-hour time difference notwithstanding) I will be landing in San Francisco.

I went to Eli and Rahel's today to have Rosh Chodesh coffee, eat after-school lunch, and say my farewells. "This is sad," Eli said. "We had kind of gotten used to having you around." I had kind of gotten used to being around too.

L'hitraot, Jerusalem...next stop, Berkeley. My roommates and I shared an amazing dinner together tonight and then stayed up very late talking. Even when the dishes had been cleared and the lights turned off we stood in the dark of the dining room not wanting to say goodbye. "You know, I am just going to say goodnight like every other night," I decided aloud. "The only difference is that in the morning you will wake up and instead of me being asleep in the salon, I will be buckled in tight and heading north towards London." "Oh, but come on," said Eva. "Of course it is not the same."

No it isn't, but not much this year is the same for me. One girl, one year, one world--my journey as a professional volunteer continues. So now, like my housemates who are already sleeping, I will turn off the lights and lie down in my sofa bed (photos forthcoming!) and try to rest. At 3 I will wake up and at 4 I will leave, and then when the alarm clocks start going off in the morning everyone else will get up out of bed and head to the kitchen for breakfast and everything here will be mostly the same, except that I will not be around.

I will be gone away somewhere, again.

So Much To Say, So Little Time

In my mind I am saving up so many things to write about here:

•my housemates
•speaking Hebrew
•the good-bye party my students threw me
•saying farewell to the kids I've been tutoring
•current paralysis in Jerusalem preparing for George Bush's arrival
•my final trip, for now, to the Kotel today
•hand-me-down luggage

...but I only have four more days here and I do not want to spend that time sitting in front of a computer writing about my experiences. I want to spend it creating more experiences about which I can write once I arrive home.

So, I do not have much to say for now because I am busy living my life here, but don't worry--I will tell you all about it eventually.

Change In Change In Plans

My grandmother is sick.
My grandmother is ninety-one years old.
She is in the hospital in Chicago.
I live in Jerusalem.
I leave for San Francisco on Thursday.
Once I get there it will be much easier to go see her.
The time difference makes it hard to find out what's going on.
Also changing my ticket would cost between $300 and $1,200.
So, I'm going back to Berkeley and I will figure it out from there.

*sigh of relief*

Change in Plans

First, I was supposed to go from Israel directly to Africa in February and then back to the States in May. Then I decided to go from Israel to Berkeley in January for a month before leaving the States again for Ghana in February. Now my 91-year-old grandma is in the hospital in Chicago and I have two choices: fly to San Francisco on Thursday, take a shower eat a burrito repack my three bags of stuff into just one bag and leave the next morning for Chicago until no one knows when, barely getting to see any of my friends and definitely not getting any sleep and leaving an even bigger mess in my room at Mark and Rebecca's than exists there already; or, fly to London on Thursday and instead of continuing on to San Francisco fly instead via New York to Chicago where I will arrive with my three huge bags from life overseas the past three months and stay again an undetermined amount of time with my family as we experience this difficult time together and I still feel far from home even when I am sitting in the very house on South Street in West Dundee, Illinois where I slept the first seventeen years of my life.

Have I mentioned for some new and mysterious reason my credit card is now being declined for international transactions so even if I knew what I wanted to do I wouldn't be able to pay for it myself? That was a great feeling, at 2:30 in the morning, just having gotten off Skype with my travel agent who was leaving her office for the weekend but first told me there was nothing she could do for me until Monday...

But, it was really nothing compared to the even better feeling of having to call my father, the one whose mother is in the hospital and so who of course has a million other concerns than me and my presently-defunct CitiBank Visa, and interrupt him in the middle of a Friday night dinner out a lovely restaurant with my mother and their two oldest friends to tell him that I needed him to call United Airlines and buy my ticket from Oakland to Chicago...

And all the while feeling extrememly frustrated because the international call from my cell phone to his had such a terrible connection that he couldn't hear me and have I mentioned how great it feels to be 33 years old and a) need your dad to buy you a plane ticket because you can't get your international financial act together and b) not have eaten in a restaurant on a Friday night or any other time of the week because you have been making $110 a week for the past three months?

I KNEW WHEN I LEFT THE STATES THAT SHIT LIKE THIS MIGHT HAPPEN AND NOW IT IS HAPPENING AND I AM NOT DEALING WITH IT VERY WELL AND IT'S HARD ENOUGH LEAVING JERUSALEM ANYWAY MUCH LESS THINKING ABOUT MY ILL GRANDMOTHER AND I FEEL SELFISH FOR MY RESENTMENT ABOUT CHANGING MY PLANS AND THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGES FOR ME ABOUT BEING SINGLE--HAVING TO MAKE ALL THESE IMPORTANT DECISIONS ON MY OWN--NOT TO EVEN MENTION BEING THE ONLY ONE DRAGGING MY THREE BAGS AND TWO CARRY-ONS THROUGH THE CUSTOMS LINES ON THREE DIFFERENT CONTINENTS WITHOUT ANYONE TO KEEP ME COMPANY OR WATCH MY STUFF WHILE I GO TO THE BATHROOM AND WHAT CAN I SAY----I AM VERY PISSED OFF ABOUT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!!

And, I try not to use bad language in my blog because I know some of my students read it (hello, friends!) but as Rachel Klein said to me once after shifting her usually-mild character to yell at a kid who really deserved it, "Sometimes they just have to see how you are really feeling."

So that is how I am really feeling. It is my last Shabbat here and I have spent most of it on the phone or the Internet problem-solving this instead of my usual Shabbat morning activities: reading, going for a run, cooking a delicious lunch...so that is frustrating, and even more frustrating is that last night was supposed to be our apartment's birthday party since we are all born in January and it was the last weekend we'd all be here to celebrate together but everyone forgot except me. Even one of the guests we'd invited asked one of my housemates what time he should bring his salad over for the party but she told him there wasn't any party because she had forgotten.

It is too cold to go for a run to try and knock this out of my system and I was going to try and do some yoga, one of my most hated activities but supposedly very calming, but I am cold in my tank top and wide namaste pants and I haven't eaten anything and I think I am just going to give up on being balanced for today and get in the shower and then eat a grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes. Yeah. That might help.

I have come a long way so far this year, moving past my control freak self and becoming more flexible and easy-going when it comes to changes in plans but this one is a little hard to deal with for me right now.

I Am Hard on Things

I brought, in an episode of overpacking that ended up in this case being justified, three watches to Israel. The first one I broke when I smacked it against the door of the sherut, the shared-ride taxi, from the airport to Jerusalem the night that I arrived. The second one stopped working when I wore it into the Dead Sea a few weeks ago--apparently "water-resistance" means only normal water, not the oily brew that exists at the lowest point on earth. So now I have only one watch that still functions and it is my grown-up watch, the one I bought ten years ago for $275 (my largest single purchase up until that time) when I signed my first teaching contract in California because I decided I was too old and sophisticated to wear my old beat-up Swatch to work every day.

However, I am hesitant to wear my grown-up watch anywhere now that I have ruined the first two because, as my mom told me when I was young and as seems to still be true, I am hard on things. So my watch remains in my bag and I keep time the way many people do, with the help of my cell phone. On the (short) list of things to buy while I'm in the States: the sturdiest watch I can find. I've already ruined my Timex Ironman sports watch (casualty #2, Dead Sea) so the only solution that remains as far as I can tell is this: the Casio G-Shock. It is not cool, hip, stylish, or flashy. It does not have, as most offerings at REI.com do, an altimeter barometer heart rate monitor or as far as I can tell even a chronograph to measure elapsed time. It does have an alarm and a light, however, the two most important factors after its shock-resistant-ness. So, fine. Retro is cool once again from what I've heard and Casio was the first company to ever make a digital watch, long before anyone else, based on calculator technology, so vintage chic here I come.

Please--if you have any other suggestions of watches that might meet my needs, do let me know. Overlooking form to this extent that I am embracing function is more of a stylistic sacrifice than I was planning on making. And Casio? As Eva would say, "but COME ON!"

Acharon, Acharon Ha Viv

When Sonya was the DeLeT fellow in my classroom two years ago, she introduced an expression into the lexicon of our learning community that was not only very helpful then but has proven to be quite enduring.

Acharon, acharon ha viv...

In English it can be roughly translated to "last but not least" and it comes from the Torah. The original story is a beautiful one of love and family and humility and grace, and is not one I will retell now, so you'll just have to trust me. As ancient as it is and as lofty as its origins might seem, it can be used in many everyday school-related circumstances from calling kids to line up for lunch to assigning homework and for many things in between and so it quickly became a mainstay of our vocabulary.

Since I came to Israel in October I have learned more Hebrew than ever before, due in part to my nighttime ulpan class but more attributable to the fact that at the school where I teach English I am immersed in this mysterious, foreign, complicated, beautiful language. It was not until this trip that I heard the expression Sonya taught us used in the real Israeli world--where else? In a school of course.

So acharon, acharon ha viv...it is my last Thursday here, the beginning of what feels heavily in my heart like a string of lasts that is only just beginning: the last day of school, my last Shabbat...the list feels sorrowfully long right now. Seven days from right this instant I will be buckled into my British Airways aisle seat and already soaring west across the Mediterranean. I am doing all I can to stay present, to enjoy every day for what it is and not freak out about the 'acharon'-ness of it all. I wanted to go back, I remind myself...and really, it is the same as when I first got here and wanted to be in California. Last but not least can take awhile, longer in the soul than in the flesh I think. I plan to make the most of the next seven days because I know I will miss it here once I leave to go back home.

New Year's Day

Some people say that the way you spend the first day of the new year is an indicator of the ways you'll spend the next twelve months. If that is true I am in for a great 2008 because my day today was filled with:

*sleeping peacefully and very late, and not even feeling guilty about it

*eating a delicious breakfast with someone I enjoy very much

*standing my ground firmly in an awkward conversation, being brave to say what I wanted to have happen, and getting what I wanted in the end because I knew it was the right thing even though it made others uncomfortable and one person especially quite annoyed

*having people give me money

*an even more delicious lunch alone while reading the paper

*adventurously taking the intercity bus to a brand-new destination

*spending the afternoon and evening at the family home of a good friend and colleague of mine in gorgeous surroundings on a kibbutz in the country

*making it in plenty of time to the nearest bus "station", a hut on the side of the road, to catch the #434 back to Jerusalem

*feeling worried when I actually stopped to realize that it was dark and freezing and I was standing all alone on the side of the freeway waiting for a bus, then reassured when the bus came into sight

*taking a shower with plenty of warm water, an unusual event in our house not just on holidays but really any day of the year

*going to bed early (well early for me...)

If these things foretell the year that lies ahead of me, I would say my 2008 is going to be a very calm, plentiful, and affirming one indeed. I hope so because all I can say is that it's about time, already.

New Year's Eve

Let me preface this entire post by saying I do not so much believe in celebrating the secular new year. As Ido and I agreed one time, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur in the fall are quite enough of an intense, challenging, but ultimately joyful observance thankyouverymuch. And also the 31st of December and all its attendant carryings-on has always, as long as I can remember, felt to me like a set of overwhelmingly high expectations. American popular culture, at least in hipster-drenched San Francisco, tells us that to have a fun New Year's Eve one must have:

*the most stylish outfit
*the most glamorous lipstick
*the most gorgeous date
*the most fabulous plans
*the most romantic midnight kiss
*the most manageable hangover the next morning

I am not good at being the most of anything, generally speaking, and so this set of expectations has been challenging to manange the past oh, eight or so years in San Francisco and really much longer than that, actually since I've been a grown up at all.

Which isn't to say I haven't had some very lovely New Year's Eves. My most favorite one of recent memory was...two years ago? Three? When I went to dinner with Mark and Rebecca at Range in the Mission and then to Luna Park afterwards for dessert and champagne. Last year was also very nice as well when, in a cute new outfit, I went to dinner at Eliza's with Batshir, Dean, and John and then to that very cute, very retro movie theater on California Street to see The Good Shepherd--a movie that includes omance, intrigue, courage, and adventure...all good hallmarks of a new year's beginning.

One thing I'm learning about this year is the lowering of expectations. I had no plans yesterday, no sense of how I might spend the holiday and I didn't really care. This would usually be no small feat in the comparison-prone Bay Area but here in Jerusalem where January 1st isn't even a holiday and the new year is four months old to most people it was very easy indeed actually. In the end my housemates and I cooked and baked and bartended a delicious and enjoyable party for the small group of people we do know here in Israel, Hana's friends mostly, and having bought plastic plates and forks didn't even have much to clean up before going to bed. Plus, so many amazing leftovers! For once I can't wait to pack my lunch in the morning before I go to school.